


making it better

by Iletyouseeme



Series: Breaking bread, and breaking beds. [2]
Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Emotional Constipation, Fluff and Smut, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-25
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2020-03-17 04:13:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18957640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iletyouseeme/pseuds/Iletyouseeme
Summary: A snippet in time from somewhere in Tom and Alfie's future.





	making it better

Tom’s bedroom was a box of a room with dark striped walls; heady with the remnants of opium and smokes and whiskey.

“Will you stay?”

The door was shut. Business had been left at the office.

But this was a different sort of business.

“Yeah,” Alfie said. “If you like.”

Tom was sat down on the bed. Composure but for the cigarette in his left hand.

“Ok then.”

So much dichotomy in a day made Alfie’s teeth ache. Eli had driven them from Camden to arrive in Small Heath early this morning. Tom had set him up with one of his brothers and the cousin. So whilst the boys got acquainted over a bottle of the good stuff, Tom and Alfie had hauled themselves away.

The afternoon had been spent watching Tom talk in different languages down the phone as they carved out new plans for the racetracks. Alfie had liked it. Witnessing Tom in his element – dark and smart in his posh suit. Opulent surroundings with no thought for central heating.

Now they stood far apart in Tom’s childhood bedroom, the pretence of business stripped back to leave them feeling awkward. The day had been full of lingering looks. Fingers brushing over plans. Alfie had longed to get Tom under him, either perched on the edge of his desk. Against the wall maybe.

“We could book a room for the night,” Alfie offered.

“No one will hear us if we’re quiet.”

Alfie smiled, though it looked a little sad. He sat down at Tom’s desk.

“You’re not often quiet, darlin’,” he said, taking a cursory glance out the window. Watery Lane was busy for so late in the day.

“I’ll have to try, then,” Tom countered. He offered Alfie a weak smile, shuffling closer. A bit more and their toes would brush.

“You sure?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“It smells like nightmares in here, Tom.”

There was a moment of silence. Oppressive in a room that already felt like it had seen enough bad dreams and sleepless nights for a lifetime.

“Of course you’d say shit like that,” Tom said back, sounding thoroughly disarmed. He put out his smoke on the ashtray beside the bed.

“Don’t be like that, love,” Alfie soothed his hand over Tom’s thigh. They shared eye contact for a second. The look on Alfie’s face made Tom want to reach for another cigarette. If only for something to keep a modicum of distance between them.

The thing was, for Tommy at least, this was all getting very confusing. He was sure Poll was cottoning on to how long Tom spent on the phone making calls to Alfie. Urgent, last minute trips to Camden. The bread had exploded, for fucks sake, and he just had to go.

They kissed, often. Tom was content to simply feel Alfie’s warmth. To fall asleep after a long days work. The sex was good, surprisingly good, but still so new to them both that the passion was thwarted. Their bodies didn’t know each other well enough yet.

The madness of it all also meant that Tom often fell asleep before anything substantial or earthshattering could take place. Alfie could come between his thighs and the man from Birmingham could be dozing off before they had even left the bakery.

It was precious and clumsy. Tom was so sweet and receptive and warm under Alfie. His body was strong. And when they did kiss, and when things did go further - without Tom’s attention wavering or Alfie’s back playing up – Tom’s thighs around Alfie’s hips was unlike anything Alfie had ever felt or known before.

“Let’s go to bed, shall we?”

And Tom nodded.

Alfie let himself be undressed. Tom made quick work of the buttons of his shirt. Spent his time lifting Alfie’s undershirt over his head.

“You alright there, darlin’?”

Tom had that soft looking lower lip of his trapped between his teeth.

“Just enjoying the view, is all,” and the wickedness in his eyes scorched. He made quick work of the rest of Alfie’s clothes, folding it all neatly over the back of the chair at his desk.

“Now you,” Alfie said. He felt the cold of the room, and turned his attention to Tom’s outer layers.

“Don’t yank at it,” the other man said.

“Oh yes, sorry. I forgot you were fucking _particular_ about your posh boy suits, mate.”

“Well, you’re doing it wrong.”

“Oh, sod it,” Alfie relinquished his hold on Tom’s waistcoat. Why did one man need so many bloody articles of clothing?

“You do it, I don’t have the fingers for it.”

“God, you’re useless.” And Tom made startlingly light of it all.

“You want to stop here?” Alfie asked. Whereas Alfie was fully naked, and often liked the feeling of cold air against his ever-warm skin, Tom liked to keep on his white undershirt, breeches and socks. It was just a fact at this point. Tom didn’t like to get naked. Even with Alfie over him and the room in darkness, his refusal to bare himself fully was something that Alfie had accepted, if a little begrudgingly.

“Yes,” and this occasion wasn’t any different. They kissed, and held onto each other for an indiscernible amount of time. Alfie was aware of gravity shifting and the sound of the bed coils springing when Tom tipped them both back. There was a pause, when Alfie looked down as Tom looked up, blue eyes blown wide as Alfie’s kisses and touches made him soft. Softer than he ever was in the day, and harder in his underwear than any almost perfunctory foreplay ought to do.

Except, with Alfie, everything felt _amplified_. Kisses and touches that should be pedestrian were in fact mind boggling. Tom got swept up in pleasure from the simplest of things. He made so much noise that he could rival John and Esme in the next room.

“Hush, Tom,” said Alfie, though in truth, he adored when Tom was vocal. He didn’t actually give a shit if the whole of Small Heath heard Tommy Shelby mewling and moaning as he rutted into the Jew from Camden Town, but Tom would no doubt be embarrassed when dawn broke.

“Don’t want to be waking up the neighbours, do we, love?”

“Oh, fuck the neighbours,” Tom growled back. His breath hitched as Alfie’s fingers scorched over his chest, down the front of his breeches.

“Just don’t stop, for fucks sake, don’t stop.”

And Alfie, having lived through a right cockup of a war, knew very well when to take orders. So he didn’t, and took Tom firmly in his grasp.

“Oh Jesus, _Alfie_ ,” and his breath continued to hitch right in Alfie’s ear. Tom looked like he was slowly losing his mind, squeezing his eyes shut, his mouth a permanent _oh_.

And it was when his thighs – those gorgeous fucking thighs – squeezed around Alfie that he realised that they needed to backtrack or else Alfie was going to come embarrassingly soon. As in ridiculously soon.

“Sit back for me, darlin’,” Alfie instructed. He struggled to keep his voice now. Struggled to think even. His brain wasn’t functioning, not properly at least, not whilst he was looking at Tommy panting and pink beneath him.

“Where are you going?” Tom asked, and God, he sounded desperate. Bitter with the loss as his whole body shivered. Alfie moved down the bed, exposing them both to the cold air.

“You’re a miracle, you know that, Tommy Shelby? A fucking miracle, mate.” Alfie grabbed both Tom’s legs, slotting them over his shoulders. The man looked sinful, covered in a layer of sweat that seemed to just make him fucking glow. Tom was similarly affected by Alfie, quivering in anticipation. His mind was delirious with the thought of Alfie – near him, on him, in him – he wanted it so badly he could barely breathe.

“Come back,” and he sounded like he was pleading. His socked feet brushed Alfie’s jaw. “Come back. I need you.”

Tom could see Alfie’s eyes darken. His hands clasped around Tom’s ankles, lips pressing to those joints as he looked at Tommy like he wanted to devour him whole.

“Let me see you, love.” Alfie said. He was so drunk on the thought of Tom, of sex, of how amazing they felt together, that he couldn’t resist. It was the penultimate mental image, seeing Tom writhe on Alfie’s cock with not a stitch of clothing on.

Tom blanched. “Alfie,” he sounded like he was whining. “Alfie, please.”

“Take them off, love,” and Alfie was slotting himself back between Tom’s parted thighs. “I want to see all of you.”

Internally, Tom’s mind was whirring. He was dizzy with lust but utterly, ridiculously, completely petrified. Of being _naked_ , with the man he was becoming quickly and quite dangerously fond of. Something so simple as being naked with Alfie felt so earth shatteringly impactful. And it was all his own worry, his own mental state. Alfie told him so many sweet compliments so frequently that Tom didn’t even know what to do with himself.

But something about those last few layers felt enormous.

“I don’t know if I can,” he confessed.

“You’re beautiful, Tommy Shelby,” Alfie was busying himself at Tom’s neck. His large hands squeezing over Tom’s hips.

“You’re the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen,” and if only Tom would believe it. He could deal with the Peaky’s and his crazy family – but something so simple as a compliment and Tom felt like his confidence, his entire fucking centre of gravity just shift.

He felt the urge to cry, which was just so ridiculous that Tom couldn’t even fathom it.

And then Alfie’s hand cupped his jaw. Their eyes met, the momentary silence between them seemingly inexplicably powerful.

“You’re safe with me,” and Tom felt his last resistance shatter.

“You don’t have to be nervous,” Alfie said.

“I just _can’t_ , Alfie,” he breathed, nearly sounding like he was sobbing. He didn’t want Alfie to see him, to see his chest covered in scars and tattoos. To feel the bullet wound in his shoulder and above his heart. Alfie called him beautiful, but Tom had never felt so further from it.

He had felt proud in uniform, and felt powerful in a dark suit, but stripped bare, it would just be him. Tom from Small Heath, the shy, smart boy who had always been unsure of himself.

Alfie paused above him. The other man was always astute – could see Tom’s brain firing in all the wrong directions before anyone else would even pick up on it. 

“Ok,” and Alfie sounded like he was. There was a pause, wherein Alfie gazed at Tommy with a look that made him squirm. He was just so magnificently intense and so magnificently Alfie, not afraid of anything.

“This is about you, love,” and his hand brushed through Tom’s hair. “If you want to keep it on,” his other hand brushed over Tom’s undershirt, “we can make that work.”

But it felt like such a defeat. “I’m sorry,” Tom said. “I know you want more.”

“I do,” he said. Tom appreciated the honesty. “But you’ve got to be comfortable.” His lips brushed Tom’s ear. “That doesn’t mean we can’t have a fucking good time regardless. I’m not waiting on that day you want more, Tom. I’m here with you now, enjoying every minute.”

“You are?”

Alfie’s chest panged. Tom sounded so unsure. Alfie vowed to himself in that moment that he would change that.

“Absolutely,” he said, and it was the truth. “We go at your pace, darlin’.”

Alfie’s words made the constricting feeling in Tom’s chest ease a little bit. The longing for a smoke subsided.

If things progressed, Tommy could very easily see himself falling in love with him. But those were thoughts he kept to himself.

“However,” Alfie said. “You’re still going to have to talk to your little brother in the morning about screaming my name all night.”

“Oh, shut up,” Tom said, breaking into a smile. Alfie’s fingers brushed over his cheek.

“You want me to shut up?” He smirked, kissing down Tom’s body. “I think I can find something to do to keep my mouth occupied.”

“Oh, really?”

Alfie nodded, a devilish look in his eye. His free hand tugged at Tom’s underwear. “Think you can shuffle these down for me, darlin’?”

“I think that can be arranged.”

“Always a pleasure doing business with you, Mr Shelby.”

“The pleasure’s mine, Mr Solomons.”

“Not yet, mate,” Alfie smirked. “But it will be.”


End file.
